Challenging mindsets, changing behaviours.

There's a new chapter for Insights Discovery profiles, and I think it's one of the most useful they've released in a while: Critical Thinking. 🧠

McKinsey found that 61% of managers say at least half the time they spend on decisions is ineffective. Most of that isn't carelessness. It's confirmation bias, anchoring, groupthink, and the vivid example that crowds out the data.

This new chapter gives each person a view of how they think through a decision, stage by stage, through the lens of their colour energies. It shows where their preferences help them and where they tend to skip a step.

For teams, the real value is having a shared language to work through it.

Once you can name the pattern, you can talk about the decision without it feeling personal.

With more decisions now partly shaped by AI, that matters even more.

We've written up how the chapter works, plus seven habits any team can start with this month 👇

https://lnkd.in/eTQkYTHR

Which step in your team's decisions gets skipped most often?

6% of managers think young recruits are ready for work.

45% of Gen Z think they are.

You could drive a bus through that gap. It comes from the Chartered Management Institute's Bridging the Gap report in July, where almost eight in ten young people also said their education leaned too heavily on theory.

That's why we built our early careers programme around the stuff lecture rooms skip - real work-life skills. 

There are 13 modules, and these are the four graduates and apprentices tend to talk about most:

1️⃣ Personal Effectiveness. Insights Discovery gives them a language for how they work and how everyone around them works. Every other module builds on it.

2️⃣ Navigating the Professional World. Managing upwards, reading the room, the unwritten rules nobody bothers to write down.

3️⃣ Coaching and Feedback. GROW and Radical Candour, then small peer coaching groups that carry on long after the session finishes.

4️⃣ Imposter Syndrome. Starting out can feel like everyone else got the manual except you.

Programmes run anywhere from 6 to 36 months, and the part I'm proudest of is 98% attendance three years running. Graduates don't keep turning up to things they find pointless.

If you look after a graduate or apprentice intake, the full programme is linked in the comments.

What's the one thing you wish someone had taught you in your first year at work?

#EarlyCareers #GraduateDevelopment #Apprenticeships #InsightsDiscovery

Fifteen of us sell the same product. We spent an afternoon in London making each other better at it.

Sandy Wilson, People and Strategy Director at Insights, brought together a room full of Discovery Partners, most of whom, on paper, are each other's competition.

We talked about two things that matter far more than who gets which contract.

1. Storytelling in leadership
Every leader knows their strategy. Very few can make people care about it. 

The colour energies give people a language for how they show up, but the story is what makes it stick six months later, once the workshop poster has come off the wall. Anna Schaffner walked us through her philosophy of Leadership Storytelling, and presented the impact one workshop had on the leadership team at Insights... laughter, tears, change of perceptions and improved communication, to mention a few.

2. The room itself
Much like any workshop you would attend with us, a lot of value came from the people in it. Listening, challenging, connecting, swapping stories about the people we've worked with along the way with no agenda or ego to be seen.

Insights Discovery is a fantastic tool. What makes it more than a tool is the 10k+ community of practitioners, who between us have put nearly six million profiles into the hands of people who needed them. 

For one day, the commercial differences went in the bin, and our purpose did the talking.

Give a little more than you take. Everyone walks away with more than they need - it's the Unify Partnership way!!

We're ending the week on a high! 🥳 

Unify Partnership is now formally accredited by the CPD Standards Office.

🤔 Why does that actually matter?

👉 It's not just a badge for the website (though it'll be going up there too). It means our Personal Effectiveness workshop is now a recognised CPD activity.
👉 Delegates can log real, formal points for attending, something we know matters when L&D teams have to justify training spend and prove development is actually happening, not just ticking a box.

Practically, here's what changes for anyone participating in the workshop:

👉 You can request a formal digital certificate of attendance.
👉 Hard copies are available too if your team prefer something physical.
👉 You'll see the CPD Standards Office logo on our materials from now on, that's your assurance the content's been properly assessed.

🫸 What hasn't changed is how we deliver. 

It doesn't mean we have to go all 'talk and chalk', or death by PowerPoint 🥱 

We can (and often do) run this as a fully experiential session with no slides shown at all, even in Hyde Park or on the Long Walk at Windsor Castle 🏰 with the King and his entourage trotting past in horse and carriage (true story), so teams still get a personalised experience that focuses on their real-time team and leadership issues.

😍 Proud of this one. It's recognition of something we've believed for years: that development only counts if people actually walk away seeing things differently, doing things differently and building relationships differently.

🙏 Thanks go out to the Unify Partner team who make what we do real 🥁:

The kindest feedback I've ever received was also the bitterest pill to swallow 💊 

That's the idea behind Radical Candour: honesty and kindness aren't opposites. Caring personally is what makes challenging directly land as help, not harm.

In our new blog we break down Kim Scott's framework: the four quadrants, the pros and the pitfalls, and how each Insights Discovery colour energy can stretch into honest, caring feedback (yes, even the harmony-craving Green Energy 🌱).

Link to the full blog in the comments 👇

What's the piece of feedback you're glad someone was brave enough to give you?

Most managers have been promoted for being great at their job, not for leading people. 🎯

That gap shows up fast. Gallup found that managers account for at least 70% of the variance in team engagement scores. In other words, people don't leave companies, they leave the way they're managed. Yet new managers are often handed a team and left to figure it out alone.

The fix isn't complicated. Give them the basics early: how to have honest conversations, set clear expectations, and listen properly. Confident managers build calmer, more committed teams. 🌱

Our new manager training does exactly that, helping first-time leaders find their footing before bad habits set in: https://lnkd.in/eGVkbKeH 

What's one thing you wish someone had taught you before your first leadership role?
 

Unify Partnership supports just under 200 Insights Discovery practitioners across the UK.

Across each licence type, we deliver ongoing development plans designed to upskill, enable and support practitioners - from products and services through to wider industry trends.

Yesterday, we hosted our monthly Associate Masterclass, focusing on the Insights Transformational Leadership Profile.

The session sparked open, healthy conversation as we shared perspectives and explored updates from across the Insights partner channel.

We also took a deep dive into the Insights Discovery Transformational Leadership Profile, moving beyond theory and bringing it to life through an interactive workshop experience.

A real highlight was seeing the variety of approaches practitioners take in positioning Insights, and how they can extend its impact across a broader audience within their client base.

Powerful learning, great energy, and plenty of insight to take forward into our work.

Do you want to know more about how we support and enable Insights Discovery practitioners? 

DM us, and we'll talk you through it.

Learn more about the leadership profile here: 
https://lnkd.in/ert6-Cqf
 

It was great to see over 20 Insights Client Practitioners register for today's masterclass on the Unify Team Assessment and team coaching workshop. 

The Unify Team Assessment is built on 48 statements across 16 facets. The assessment blends insights from Project Aristotle, the Insights Discovery colour model of behaviours, and Patrick Lencioni's 5 Dysfunctions of a team.

The result? A simple, anonymous survey that gives a team ownership over their development.

In just 90 minutes, we explored how to benchmark and map results, present the data with confidence, and run a focused team coaching workshop that leads to accountable actions and a clear path to track progress.

Learn more about the Unify Team Assessment here:

https://lnkd.in/etH9JX-q

This month’s Insights Discovery Client Practitioner Masterclass focused on a topic many of us face regularly: Difficult Conversations - both how to have them effectively, and how to facilitate workshops that help others do the same.

Unsurprisingly, this proved to be a hot topic with a quarter of our practitioner network registering.

Here’s what we explored together:

❤️ How emotion shows up in difficult conversations, and how the colour energies tend to react under pressure
🧠 The rational vs. irrational cognitive processes that influence how conversations unfold
🥸 Insights from Jefferson Fisher’s new book, How to Improve Your Next Conversation
🗺️ How to effectively prepare and plan for a difficult conversation
👩‍💼 Practical activities you can use when facilitating a Difficult Conversations workshop

If you deliver Insights Discovery and would like to join one of our free Practitioner Masterclasses, drop us a message and we’ll be happy to share more details.

What if better communication at work started with better self-awareness?

Our Insights Discovery Workshop helps individuals and teams gain a deeper understanding of how they think, communicate and show up at work.

Through interactive exercises and discussion, participants gain valuable personal insights into their strengths, blind spots and communication style. This greater self-awareness helps them recognise how their behaviour can impact colleagues, clients and team dynamics.

Delegates will also learn how to identify and adapt to different communication styles, helping them build stronger relationships, reduce misunderstandings and collaborate more effectively.
The result?

✔ Greater self-awareness and emotional intelligence
✔ More confident and effective communication
✔ Stronger, more connected teams